Towns to lose police stations

Two police stations in the Riverina region are closing as part of a New South Wales-wide review of premises.

Police say Yerong Creek and Bethungra will not suffer from the closure of their police stations.

Superintendent David Simmons says there is no reason to reverse the decision to close the Yerong Creek station because the town can be served from The Rock.

He says Bethungra station opens occasionally, but it is unlikely to ever have a full-time officer based at it in future and will be served from Junee.

"We do have an onus to spend the public dollar wisely, the Government constantly requires efficiency savings," Superintendent Simmons said.

"So these are the things we need to look at, how we can do business better in 2010, and part of that is reorganising a structure that commenced in the 1800s.

"The organisation is looking I guess across the broad spectrum of small stations across the state."

The Yerong Creek station closed last week and despite talks for more than an hour yesterday with Lockhart Shire Council officials and the Member for Wagga, Superintendent Simmons says it will not be reopened.

"Nobody likes to lose services and no town likes to lose police officers," he said.

"Unfortunately we have to deal with this on a business level and ask the question can we actually still provide the service that's needed without actually keeping that station open."

He says the station at Bethungra has not had an officer for two months and it is the only other station in the command likely to close.

"A lot of the work with Bethungra was done before I took command here and it's highly likely to close as well, possibly within the next couple of months.

"We're still opening it up from time to time, the police from Junee go out there. However, it's unlikely it'll ever have another full-time officer stationed there."

Hay

Meanwhile, there is concern at a failure to fill police vacancies at Hay in the western Riverina.

The Hay Shire Council wants all police stations in western division towns to be classified as "special remote" to help attract officers.

The council's general manager, Allan Dwyer, says Hay may not have high crime rates, but the police station should be fully staffed.

"At the moment, I think there's about four positions vacant here which the local commander's having trouble filling because we don't enjoy the special remote classification which entitles the police officers to much more by way of benefits," Mr Dwyer said.

"Places like Bourke and Brewarrina have police officers lined up to come there for work because they are classified as special remote.

"But because we're not, we don't enjoy that quality and we'd like to make sure our police station is fully manned and operational.

"Even though we don't have many troubles as I say, it'd be nice to keep it that way and it's very difficult without that classification."